D&D (2024) Rogue's Been in an Awkward Place, And This Survey Might Be Our Last Chance to Let WotC Know.

[Maxperson]

AC in 3E was awful - this is the AC and this bonus stacks with this one bonus but not that other bonus and then when you are flatfooted this is your AC, unless it is a touch AC and then it is this.

It worked just fine. It just wasn't simple like 5e. It may have been complicated, but it made sense.

 

[tetrasodium]

AC in 3E was awful - this is the AC and this bonus stacks with this one bonus but not that other bonus and then when you are flatfooted this is your AC, unless it is a touch AC and then it is this.

The scenario you describe where a player needed to think about what stacked with what almost never occurred. It was very simple then because the number of ways to get a bonus that could stack were extremely low and they rarely were able to stack with themselves if you happened to find a way that you could double up on a particular bonus. Even beyond that there were few ways to get anything but armor shield or enhancement bonus.

 

[James Gasik]

The scenario you describe where a player needed to think about what stacked with what almost never occurred. It was very simple then because the number of ways to get a bonus that could stack were extremely low and they rarely were able to stack with themselves if you happened to find a way that you could double up on a particular bonus. Even beyond that there were few ways to get anything but armor shield or enhancement bonus.

If anything, Pathfinder 1e was where situational bonuses really got out of hand. Just looking at my Oracle, she has:

+2 AC vs. critical hit confirmation rolls.
+2 dodge bonus to AC in cold environments.
+2 on saves vs. charms and compulsions.
+4 on Will saves vs. fear.
+2 competence bonus for Will mind-affecting saves.
+3 to Will mind-affecting saves.
+5 circumstance bonus to Bluff and Diplomacy checks when dealing with individuals who might find her attractive.
-10 penalty to Will saves made against non-mind-affecting Divination spells and spell-like abilities.
+1 to hit with Opportunity attacks.
+Cha mod to healing received from others.

The save bonuses alone slow down play immensely, as I constantly have to ask if a given Will save is mind-affecting or a charm/compulsion, and of course, monster abilities in Pathfinder 1e will often lack sufficient keywords to inform you, so the GM has to make a call every time.

By contrast, I can look at my 3.5 Cleric and see that while he has many bonuses (he uses Divine Metamagic to tag the entire party with 24-hour buffs and then mostly heals or uses his Reserve Feat while letting the rest of the party wreck encounters), they're all quite straightforward, increasing AC, saves, attacks, or skills. Calculating touch AC is fairly easy- just ignore armor and natural armor, everything else counts. Calculating flat-footed AC is also fairly easy- ignore Dexterity and Dodge bonuses.

That having been said, even with me handing out note cards to the other players with their party buffs active, some of the players would still somehow forget that they had a +2 sacred bonus on attack and damage rolls, which confused me when these were the same guys constantly jockeying to get flanking bonuses.

Eventually the DM solved this problem by giving everyone fillable pdf character sheets with boxes you could check that would instantly update your sheet with all the modifiers, lol.

 

[tetrasodium]

If anything, Pathfinder 1e was where situational bonuses really got out of hand. Just looking at my Oracle, she has:

+2 AC vs. critical hit confirmation rolls.
+2 dodge bonus to AC in cold environments.
+2 on saves vs. charms and compulsions.
+4 on Will saves vs. fear.
+2 competence bonus for Will mind-affecting saves.
+3 to Will mind-affecting saves.
+5 circumstance bonus to Bluff and Diplomacy checks when dealing with individuals who might find her attractive.
-10 penalty to Will saves made against non-mind-affecting Divination spells and spell-like abilities.
+1 to hit with Opportunity attacks.
+Cha mod to healing received from others.

The save bonuses alone slow down play immensely, as I constantly have to ask if a given Will save is mind-affecting or a charm/compulsion, and of course, monster abilities in Pathfinder 1e will often lack sufficient keywords to inform you, so the GM has to make a call every time.

By contrast, I can look at my 3.5 Cleric and see that while he has many bonuses (he uses Divine Metamagic to tag the entire party with 24-hour buffs and then mostly heals or uses his Reserve Feat while letting the rest of the party wreck encounters), they're all quite straightforward, increasing AC, saves, attacks, or skills. Calculating touch AC is fairly easy- just ignore armor and natural armor, everything else counts. Calculating flat-footed AC is also fairly easy- ignore Dexterity and Dodge bonuses.

That having been said, even with me handing out note cards to the other players with their party buffs active, some of the players would still somehow forget that they had a +2 sacred bonus on attack and damage rolls, which confused me when these were the same guys constantly jockeying to get flanking bonuses.

Eventually the DM solved this problem by giving everyone fillable pdf character sheets with boxes you could check that would instantly update your sheet with all the modifiers, lol.

We were talking about d&d 3.x pointing to an example from Pathfinder class derived from the 3.5 divine soul as a point where it can breakdown only serves to spotlight how badly 5e relies on forcing the GM to adhere to its "no feats no magic items no MC" design considerations in order to avoid complete collapse of their own game when the math shatters

 

[Maxperson]

The scenario you describe where a player needed to think about what stacked with what almost never occurred. It was very simple then because the number of ways to get a bonus that could stack were extremely low and they rarely were able to stack with themselves if you happened to find a way that you could double up on a particular bonus. Even beyond that there were few ways to get anything but armor shield or enhancement bonus.

I'm going to disagree with you here and agree with @ECMO3. When you were casting clerical buffs, you had to think about stacking bonuses a lot. There were many spells that duplicated X type bonus and so you didn't want to cast those together. This was even more important once you found magic items which started giving specific X type bonuses. It was somethin you had to think about, but it wasn't hard. It took a few sessions at most to settle on what to cast when and which spells did which buffs. Definitely a lot more complicated than 5e, though.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm going to disagree with you here and agree with @ECMO3. When you were casting clerical buffs, you had to think about stacking bonuses a lot. There were many spells that duplicated X type bonus and so you didn't want to cast those together. This was even more important once you found magic items which started giving specific X type bonuses. It was somethin you had to think about, but it wasn't hard. It took a few sessions at most to settle on what to cast when and which spells did which buffs. Definitely a lot more complicated than 5e, though.

Protection from evil & good did add a +1 deflection bonus to AC, but it was also on sorcerer & wizard lists. It was not until eighth level spells that clerics got another AC buff going by a quick skim of their list those were not exactly common & I can't recall ever seeing someone dump a bunch of 8th level buffs on someone. Can you elaborate on which cleric spells other than PfE/PfG/PfL/PfC that might meet the conditions you note for AC without resorting to edge case one shots where a never played PC is dumping 8th level spells for AC buffs?

 

[Maxperson]

Protection from evil & good did add a +1 deflection bonus to AC, but it was also on sorcerer & wizard lists. It was not until eighth level spells that clerics got another AC buff going by a quick skim of their list those were not exactly common & I can't recall ever seeing someone dump a bunch of 8th level buffs on someone. Can you elaborate on which cleric spells other than PfE/PfG/PfL/PfC that might meet the conditions you note for AC without resorting to edge case one shots where a never played PC is dumping 8th level spells for AC buffs?

Not just AC.

At 1st level we have.

Bless: +1 Morale bonus to to attack and saves.
Divine Favor: +1 luck bonus to attack and damage rolls.
Magic Weapon: +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage to the weapon.
Remove Fear: +4 Morale bonus to fear effects. Our first conflict(with Bless) and we aren't even done with 1st level spells.
Shield of Faith: +2 or higher deflection bonus to AC. Our second conflict(with Protection spells) and another AC bonus.

At 2nd level we add.

Aid: +1 Morale bonus to attack. Conflicts with Bless.
Stat Raiser spells: +4 enhancement bonus to stats
Death Knell: +2 untyped bonus to strength.

At 3rd level we add

Magic Circle spells: As per protection spells.
Magical Vestment: +1 enhancement bonus to shield or armor.
Prayer: +1 luck bonus to a bunch of different rolls. Conflicts with Divine Favor.

At 4th level we add.

Divine Power: +6 enhancement bonus to strength. Conflicts with Bull's Strength.
Greater Magic Weapon: Enhancement bonuses to weapons. Conflicts with magic weapon, though that was pretty much never an issue.

So only a few at the lowest levels of ONLY the PHB. Once I pull out the Spell Compendium and a few other splat books it gets much worse. And the higher level spells just add more and more. That's also only cleric spells. Add in a wizard/sorcerer and/or druid and watch things get even more mixed up with bonuses.

 

[ECMO3]

It worked just fine. It just wasn't simple like 5e. It may have been complicated, but it made sense.

It did not make "sense" in terms of being true to life, because the abstraction of "armor class" being a number to represent relative vulnerability is not true to life given the vastly different weaponry, armors and monsters involved. There is no way to keep a number and make sense. I don't think it is any more realistic than the current 5E system.

If by "worked" you mean the math was mechanically functional , then yes it "worked".

If by "worked" you mean it was fun in play, then no I strongly disagree. In this respect it dod not "work" in terms of being a fun mechanic to figure out if you took damage.

 

[ECMO3]

The scenario you describe where a player needed to think about what stacked with what almost never occurred.

Yeah and this is just about the least immersive thing you can do in a game when making a decision - rules monger to figure out what stacks and what doesn't.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not just AC.

At 1st level we have.

Those are easy to resolve. It's still not a thing that requires thought. Just because it's been a while I consulted the dmg to double check if anything other than untyped circumstance & dodge stacks with itself. That confirmed only those two being the exception.

Bless: +1 Morale bonus to to attack and saves.

• Morale bonuses don't stack... next

Divine Favor: +1 luck bonus to attack and damage rolls.

• Luck bonuses don't stack... next

Magic Weapon: +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage to the weapon.

• enhancement bonuses don't stack and the most common source for one on a weapon is +N weaponsa +1 enhancement bonus to a weapon from a buff into a thing that really only applies at the lowest of levels... next

Remove Fear: +4 Morale bonus to fear effects. Our first conflict(with Bless) and we aren't even done with 1st level spells.

• Morale bonuses still don't stack, this is a good example of how bonus types served to limit excessive power from layered buffs & magic items, 5e simply collapses under this kind of condition... They are also fairly uncommon on equipment making this another rare case where stacking might be a concern

Shield of Faith: +2 or higher deflection bonus to AC. Our second conflict(with Protection spells) and another AC bonus.

Deflection doesn't stack. I was going to talk about an example but the sidebar on page 21 of the dmg where bonus types are explained literally covers the example I had in mind

Spoiler

Now wotc just avoids responsibility for that imbalance described by saying "we designed 5e so magic items are not required" & blaming the GM for giving them out.

At 2nd level we add.

Aid: +1 Morale bonus to attack. Conflicts with Bless.

Morale bonuses still don't stack. It's almost like all of these spells were designed so they deliberately conflict to prevent stacking.

Stat Raiser spells: +4 enhancement bonus to stats

+N attrib items are also enhancement bonuses. I can't recall a player ever forgetting & needing to check if they had a +2/+4 attrib or better item. With a 1min per level duration these spells were generally a prefight buff used when a bbeg or similar is expected. Working out who might benefit from those spells was generally a thing done well before anything resembling an adventuring day because of vancian spell prep... Next

Death Knell: +2 untyped bonus to strength.

Untyped bonuses always stack and this is buffing the caster of the spell who prepared it, there is nothing to wonder about

At 3rd level we add

Magic Circle spells: As per protection spells.

Protection from X spells grant a deflection bonus & will not stack with a ring/cloak of protection or shield of faith, see the spoiler above.

Magical Vestment: +1 enhancement bonus to shield or armor.

enhancement bonuses don't stack. If you have +N shield or armor this done nothing. This spell is really only useful at the lowest of levels when the caster probably didn't have third level slots to think about wasting one on prepping this spell. Also you could see the spoiler above where it talks about the unbalanced nature of (5e style) cumulative stacking of bonuses

Prayer: +1 luck bonus to a bunch of different rolls. Conflicts with Divine Favor.

Correct, no doubt that conflict is deliberate. Also you could see the spoiler above where it talks about the unbalanced nature of (5e style) cumulative stacking of bonuses

At 4th level we add.

Divine Power: +6 enhancement bonus to strength. Conflicts with Bull's Strength.

Were there really battle clerics unsure if they could stack bulls strength & divine power? This conflict was almost certainly deliberate. Also you could see the spoiler above where it talks about the unbalanced nature of (5e style) cumulative stacking of bonuses

Greater Magic Weapon: Enhancement bonuses to weapons. Conflicts with magic weapon, though that was pretty much never an issue.

Correct. It was never an issue because magic weapon was quickly discarded once masterwork or +1 weapons were obtained. at +1 per four caster levels this always felt like more of a prison break support type spell since it also would not stack with an equal or better +N weapon

So only a few at the lowest levels of ONLY the PHB. Once I pull out the Spell Compendium and a few other splat books it gets much worse. And the higher level spells just add more and more. That's also only cleric spells. Add in a wizard/sorcerer and/or druid and watch things get even more mixed up with bonuses.